Let us understand Turn Around of Indian Railways .

Central Railway commuters will be able to track real-time location of trains across the suburban network on a dedicated website—trainenquiry.com—or the pan-India train inquiry number 139 within a month. The information will help commuters alter their travel plans if there is a delay in or cancellation of a preferred service.

The project, which is nearing completion, will come as a relief to lakhs of CR commuters. The CR suburban network operates around 1,618 services per day on all its three lines—main, harbour as well as trans-harbour.

Commuters will not just be able to track a train’s exact location but also the preceding and following two stations.

It is the Control Office Application (COA) that currently monitors the movement of long-distance trains across the country in real time through a computer-aided interface. It was developed by the Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS)—the information technology arm of Indian Railways. The COA enables passengers to track the movement of both scheduled and unscheduled trains on the website or on 139.

CR divisional general manager Mukesh Nigam said, “Till now, one can only track the movement of long-distance trains because the suburban network is not completely integrated with the COA.”

Nigam further said he was keen on this integration to capitalize on the use of mobile phones. Moreover, in a busy city such as Mumbai, commuters would benefit from updated information on trains, he said.

The suburban network is a challenging task, Nigam said, as certain stretches run on four corridors while long-distance trains operate on two. The average frequency of services on the main line is f our minutes and harbour line five minutes.

The Railways propose to launch a series of four-digit customer helpdesk lines for 900 crore passengers which will comprise either SMS or voice recording facility or both in some cases.

Approving a uniform number scheme for the implementation of the service, the railways have obtained the permission of the Department of Telecom for the purpose.

Initially, only a security helpline was planned on 132, but it has been decided to migrate to a four-digit number for better uniformity and more services to the benefit of passengers.

Now with the addition of the fourth digit, the series will start with 1320, which will be a complaint registration service. One can clock his or her complaint both through SMS and voice.

The next numbers, 1321 and 1322, will be the railways helpdesk for catering and security related issues respectively and in both the cases, complaints can be registered only through voice facility.

Officials said these services would be launched in the first phase, while several more would be launched in due course of time for which they have reserved numbers 1323 to 1329 with the Department of Telecom.

Launch of these services will depend on the ability to develop the necessary software by CRIS (Centre for Railway Information Systems) to which the railways have entrusted the job.

Guess which train generates the maximum enquiries over the Indian Railways’ information portals?

No, it’s not the Rajdhani or a very long distance train. It’s the Magadh Express, plying between Delhi and Patna.

So why does this particular train get so many queries?

When this question was posed to passengers over Facebook, the simple answer was “because it always runs late”!

Within a short time of going live, Railways site Trainenquiry.com, and Railyatri.in, operated by Stelling Technologies for the National Train Enquiry System (NTES), have managed to dig out some rich customer insights. As Mr Sunil Bajpai, Group General Manager, Centre for Railway Information System, (CRIS) points out, some of these insights could help the Railways build some value-added services on their portals that will be useful to passengers.

Around 9,000 trains run daily on the vast Indian Railways network. Minute by minute, kilometre by kilometre, running information on these as well as operations data from 6,000 railway stations filters into the CRIS office daily.

But till recently this huge volume of data was not getting transferred to the customer. Now, some of it is getting mined and being put “in real time” on Trainenquiry.com as well as Railyatri.in, and available to users online as well as over mobile phones. “We also plan to open the API (Application programming Interface) in such a way that third party service providers can source this information and provide it as well,” says Mr Bajpai.

Already, over Trainenquiry.com and Railyatri.in, passengers can find out the exact spot a train is at any given point. Going forward, useful information such as which platform it will chug into and perhaps even the exact spot on the platform a particular coach will halt at could be shared.

Convenience
And all this without typing the train number (a major pain point for passengers trying to buy tickets on railway portals) but simply the name. “We found that most people disliked remembering numbers so have made searches easier by name,” says Mr Manish Rathi, CEO, Stelling Technologies, the tech company that powers Railyatri.in. According to Mr Bajpai, the number of daily visitors on the train enquiry site is already running into lakhs. “And this is only ten per cent of the total traffic that comes to the Railway Web sites.”

Mr Rathi says the information exchange could facilitate value-added services such as cab rentals for passengers. The data mining in real time could even help alert Railways when something untoward happens. As Mr Rathi points out, based on the information flow on Railyatri.in they can reliably say the recent Hubli-Bangalore-Hampi Express accident in Andhra Pradesh happened between 3.00 a.m. and 3.05 a.m. “We get information feeds on a train every five kilometres it traverses, which is every five minutes, and the feed stopped at 3.00 a.m.,” he says.

Part two of the city’s experiment for a common transport ticketing card, on the lines of London’s Oyster Card or Hong Kong’s Octopus card, has just begun. The Indian railways has promised to come to the city’s rescue for this project, after the failure of the ‘Go Mumbai’ card, the city’s much-promised common transport card.

The Railways has already embarked on a project to convert the railway ticketing smart card into a city transport card, to be used on several applications. In Delhi, trials have begun with the Delhi Metro.

The railway card, called the Automatic Ticket Vending Machine (ATVM) card, has been a hit with Mumbai’s seven million commuters, and has been extensively used by new and existing commuters.

“We understand the importance of making smart cards work across different modes of transport. In Mumbai, this requires some upgradation of technology, and the Railway Board is likely to take a decision soon,” said Madhav Pathak, managing director, Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) in New Delhi. CRIS is the national IT arm of the Indian Railways.

“In Delhi, the ATVM system is being introduced with the capability of multiple applications being supported, and CRIS is collaborating with the Delhi Metro Railway Corporation on this,” Pathak added. “More than five percent of the passengers on central railways (CR) already use our smart card. We are identifying novel methods to promote it,” CR chief spokesperson SC Mudgerikar said.

The Indian Railways, following frequent complaints, has decided to launch its own portal for e-ticketing to cater to the needs of the people. The new portal is likely to be launched by September-end. However, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) will continue to issue e-tickets to passengers on its website.

According to a Railway Board official, the railways will start issuing e-tickets online on its own website http://www.indianrail.gov.in from the last week of September providing an option to the needy and computer savvy passengers to procure their e-tickets either from IRCTC or Indian Railways website as per their convenience, he said.

The board official said the railways’ move would end monopoly of private sectors, who have been given franchise by IRCTC to book e-tickets from different places across the country. At present about 30 per cent of all rail ticket bookings are being made by the IRCTC. The railways is, in fact, considering to provide multiple e-ticket booking choice to passengers at a time of computerisation and globalization, he said.

The Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS), which is a wing of railways, has been working hard to make e-ticket booking functional on its own portal. Recently it became difficult for most of passengers to access the IRCTC website for booking their tickets through e-ticketing system. The recent scam related to e-ticketing booking and fake cancellation of trains in Samastipur division of East Central Railway (ECR) has forced Indian Railways to work out an alternative website for procuring e-tickets across the country, the board official said.

The official admitted that railways was forced to ban about eight lakh e-ticketing agents at the country level for booking Tatkal tickets between 8 am and 9 am on the IRCTC portal due to glaring misuse of this facility by these agents. These agents have been grabbing berths to sell them at a premium at all important stations. The ban imposed on them to access the IRCTC website in the first one hour has so far yielded good results. The new railway portal will become an easily accessible portal for the common people to procure e-tickets by any mail and express trains, he said.

It may be recalled that the Indian Railways has, of late, stripped the IRCTC of catering services on all long distance mail and express trains. Railways intends to take up the catering responsibility on itself to serve passengers with meals and breakfast on running trains, sources said.

NEW DELHI, INDIA: After bringing revolution in Passengers Reservation System (PRS) by introducing ticket booking facility online, Indian Railways is working further to enhance comfort of passengers in its reservation system.

CIOL interacted with some senior officials of Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS), responsible for the implementation of Information and Communication Technology in Indian Railways, before CRIS Day, and learnt that CRIS is working on projects to make the services greener and simultaneously improve its various processes by deploying technology.

These processes include improvement in PRS by providing confirmation to ticket in waiting list while on the move and sending instant accommodation availability status on the running train to all stations and even the stations to which it would be approaching.

Internally known as the Hand Held Terminal (HHT) system, it has been provided to Travelling Ticket Examiners (TTEs) on a pilot basis on a total of twelve Rajadhani Express trains and some trains running between Mumbai and Ahmedabad.

IRCTC had also revamped its website, to make it more user friendly. Also Oracle is helping it in freight management.

TTEs play a critical role in the efficient allotment of accommodation to the millions of passengers who reserve seats in trains.

“Use of hand-held devices by the TTEs has been envisioned as a means of easing their work, as well as making the process of berth allotment on running trains visible to passengers. It will also improve the quality of information in our databases for further analysis by our business intelligence systems,” elaborated SB Roy, Director, Passengers Reservation System (PRS), CRIS.

At present TTEs have to carry sheaves of paper reservation charts, and refer to them each time they check a passenger ticket or allot a berth on the train. With the use of hand-held devices, this paper gets eliminated.

“This will benefit passengers in two ways. First, passengers at stations that the train is yet to cross would be able to book tickets for seats that could not be occupied by the passengers who had already booked them. Secondly, passengers claiming refund against tickets that they had booked but could not travel on would be greatly facilitated,” explained Seema Kumar, General Manager in charge of the project.

Even TTEs are enjoying using these hand-held devices for ticket checking.

“With the implementation of Hand-Held Terminals on Shatabdi Trains, it has become very convenient to do ticket checking as need for carrying multiple paper charts has been completely eliminated,” said Ramesh Kumar, Deputy Train Superintendent, Shatabdti Express Trains, Delhi.

CRIS is also working on systems to provide train tickets on mobile phone of passengers.

“In case of a reserved ticket, a passenger will just have to show an SMS to the TTE instead of a paper ticket. The SMS will be sent from our server at the time of booking the ticket,” said one of the CRIS managers, who did not want to be named, and is involved in the project.

He added that since the project is under development, and will have to get the board approval, it will be too early to comment on the timeline for the availability of this facility.

With over one million passengers traveling daily on reserved tickets, the tons of paper used for printouts can be saved with this facility.

CRIS is experimenting with the system to send unreserved tickets directly to passengers’ mobile phones. Applications are being tested that would generate tickets in the mobile phone itself. However, the implementation of such systems is still some time away, since various clearances would have to be provided by the Ministry of Railways, before such tickets could become a convenient reality for the millions of passengers using train services daily.

New Delhi: Indian Railways and Centre for Railways Information System (CRIS) are exploring the possibility of implementing Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) using mobile handsets.

“Subscribers of Mobile Phones is constantly increasing and to explore the possibility of providing ticketing solution through mobile phones we have called for expression of intrest (EoI) for UTS project to get a clear picture of the feasibility and the way forward,” CRIS Chief System Manager Monica Malhotra said.

She said at present CRIS cannot say much about the project but once EoI stage is over the way forward would be clear.

These multiple interfaces have been developed primarily to extend ticketing convenience to the end-user and also to reduce the queue lengths on the railway stations.

But in reality despite the proliferation of ticketing counters the queuing problem has not been fully resolved.

This is primarily because of the fact that the passenger traveling on the unreserved segment generally reaches the station just prior to the departure time of the train. Peak hours therefore can be extremely crowded.

With mobile UTS application railways are looking at a win-win situation for the passenger and the Railways in terms of easier ticketing solutions that can lead to higher revenues.

As per the Expression of Interest (EoI) the desirable features of a mobile ticket solution will be that the user should be allowed to generate the Ticket by interfacing with the mobile phone from any physical location, for travel between a specified origin and destination point, The ticket so generated should be a smart image which should not explode into a full blown ticket till it is validated before the Journey is commenced.

EoI also stresses on features like ‘Self Destruction’, that is as soon as the validity period expires the Ticket Image should get deleted and the application so developed should make sure that it is compatible with even low-end phone so that maximum coverage is achieved.

HYDERABAD: With a crew of nearly one lakh drivers and guards labouring round the clock, 365 days a year ensuring the nation is not caught on the hop, Indian Railways is among the largest public transport employers in the world. A chink in its operations would mean only one thing: life comes to a standstill in the country.

Among the many mission critical applications in the Indian Railways is the Crew Management System (CMS), a vital component in the smooth functioning of the human resource management arm of the mammoth organisation. Developed by Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), the software and communications arm of the Indian Railways, CMS automates day-to-day business functioning by monitoring crew movement real-time, duty allocation, payment calculation and crew training in an efficient and transparent manner. “This has not only improved the safety of train operations, but also reduced the operational costs by replacing the age-old manual system,” says Deepak Ganju, General Manager, CRIS.

It was in 2006 that CRIS was entrusted with developing the role-based system. Developed entirely in-house as a web-based system on J2EE and ‘struts framework’, the architecture was adopted using object oriented analysis and design offered by IBM’s Rational software.

The heterogeneous environment of the Indian Railways makes this project unique. CMS demanded that over 400 geographically dispersed locations across the country be covered in a short span of 18 months, according to Mr. Ganju. “The team took a systematic approach in consulting the Railway officials from all over India to address the differences in practices and lack of common standards within the geographical disparity.” In CMS, the crew can interact with the system through biometric authentication via a user-friendly touch screen kiosk that is capable of supporting local languages. Among its highlights is the ‘real-time updating of operations’ that allows crew to input any abnormality encountered en route into the system. Automated SMS alerts are promptly sent to update and inform everyone. CMS was recently chosen for the ‘Most Innovative Solution using Rational Software’ for ‘The Great Mind Challenge for Business-2009’ by IBM

Philips promoted NXP Semiconductors today said it has been selected by the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) to power contactless smart cards for automatic fare collection using Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs) across the country and the project will begin by next month.

Initially, the ATVMs will be rolled out across five major cities in India, namely New Delhi, Secunderabad, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar and Pune.

As per the agreement, NXP will provide MIFARE DESFire-based ICs for approximately 6.5 lakh contactless cards over a period of one year.

”The project is expected to commence in September 2009 and will initially be rolled out in two cities,” NXP Semiconductors Senior Director (Global Sales and Marketing India) Ashok Chandak told reporters here.

However, he did not mention the name of the two cities where the project is expected to commence next month.

New Delhi, June 19: A state-of-art computerized system is being deployed by Railways across all crew booking lobbies of both drivers and guards for efficient train operations and safer journey.

The crew management system (CMS) is proposed to be deployed in 300 crew lobbies aiming at bringing in higher efficiency of drivers and guards and better crew deployment.

“So far 288 lobbies having 88,000 crew members have been covered and we hope the entire project work would be completed shortly,” a senior Railway Ministry official said.

Crew lobby is where drivers are assigned their duties and a record is maintained detailing their rosters and hours of work put in.

The official said the system will also enable regulation of the working hours of drivers and put an end to complaints of fatigue.

“Higher performance level would also raise efficiency of train operations and safety of passengers,” the official said.

The crew have been provided with biometric access that makes their authenticity devoid of any proxy reporting.

In other words, none other than the assigned driver can take charge of the train, as happened a few months back when a superfast train between New Delhi and Kanpur was operated by unassigned staff, said another official.

Implementation of CMS was approved by the Railways in 2006. The task was entrusted to CRIS for developing and providing the system, which has borrowed the best of diverse system, though not of similar efficiency, prevailing in other zones.

It automates day-to-day business functions of the crew thereby providing information of their status throughout, rostering their duty allocations, providing information on availability of crew at their home station and assigning crew to trains, the official said.

One of its hallmark lies in keeping track of the crew. It provides global tracking of all crew on the system in real time whether they are on train, resting at headquarters, on training or on leave, the official said.